Imagine this. You're in the heart of Chicago
mingling with the brightest minds in health IT.
You've arrived at the 9th annual Health IT
plus Digital Health plus RCM conference
taking place October 1st through 4th at the
luxurious Hyatt Regency Chicago.
Picture the excitement as you collect countless business
cards, forging invaluable connections with over 25 100
executive level attendees.
Feel the buzz of ideas flowing as you
engage in meaningful conversations about the future of
healthcare technology.
Envision yourself attending sessions led by over 415
elite speakers
gaining insights that could transform your organization.
From digital transformation and telehealth to clinician burnout
and cybersecurity,
each topic is designed to spark new ideas
and provide actionable takeaways, but it doesn't stop
there. Imagine sitting in a packed auditorium listening
to motivating keynotes from some of the biggest
names in sports.
Four time Super Bowl champion Rob Gronkowski,
WNBA champion and author Lisa Leslie, and NFL
legend and ESPN analyst
Eli Manning will be there sharing their stories
and inspiring you to reach new heights.
All around you, the future of Health IT
unfolds, and you're not just a spectator,
you're an active participant.
Don't wait. You can find the event website
and get
by visiting beckershospitalreview.com
and clicking on the events page. That's the
beckershospitalreview.com
events page.
Welcome everyone to the Becker's Healthcare podcast series.
I'm Ryan Mohammed, writer and moderator with Becker's
Healthcare. I'm thrilled to have with me today
James Yonan, director of dental services at Sun
Life Health. James, welcome to the Becker's Health
Care podcast. We're very excited to have you
join us today. To get started, would you
mind please introducing yourself and telling us a
bit about your background?
Yeah. Of course. My name is James Yonan.
I am the director of dental services at
Sun Life Health. I'm originally from California. I
went to undergrad at Fresno State, and then
went on to attend dental school at A.
T. Still University in Mesa, Arizona where I
got my DMD and my master's in public
health. And I've been working in public health
in a community health setting,
since graduating dental school.
Oh, wow. Thank you so much for letting
us know that.
I'm very excited to talk with you now.
I love that sort of, you know, major
in college.
So with everything, you know, being in public
health, what are some of the biggest issues
you're following in dental right now?
Well, I I would say that one of
the big issues that I've been kinda trying
to keep a track of has been corporate
dentistry.
The trends in health care now are pushing
more towards
the corporate side, and it's just making it
a little bit more challenging for those solo
practice, private practice owners,
to to truly express their passion for dentistry
and have the freedom and autonomy to do
what they want in their practice,
and then the power and influence that corporate
dentistry has.
There are some good that's coming from it.
For example, I would say, like Pacific Dental
Services
and the new change in the name that
they're doing now and the push for medical
dental integration, I think that's absolutely amazing.
But there are some downsides to it,
and I I would say a lot of
it has to do with
shaping the future of our dental
graduates from these, universities and and what they're
coming out of. And I'm I'm finding
it a lot more challenging to have dental
providers interested in pursuing a career in public
health
or working in a community health setting,
only because they've just been approached and more
eager to go towards,
this corporate
dentistry model.
And it's it's definitely creating some shortages,
for dental providers in some of these rural
communities, where patients are having access to care.
Yeah. Yeah. That's definitely interesting. I hear from,
you know, several executives a month about the
culture of m and a, And it seems
like it's a lot of take and give,
in that sort of solution.
So I I can it's probably you know,
it makes a lot of people
nervous,
even thinking about it. Is there anything that's
making you excited in what you're seeing in
the news or anything that you're doing personally
within your work, or anything else that's kinda
making you nervous or, you know, that you
focus a little bit more on?
Well, I really like this this new push
and and the new technology that's coming out
with that's incorporating AI.
I feel that,
you know, in the dental field,
there's a lot that has to do with
this word called trust. And so patients have
to trust us. And and for the longest
time ever, dentists is just dentists have just
had a bad rap. I mean, patients just
think that we are out to take advantage
of them. There's several things that's on social
media that's influencing folks to thinking that dentists
are only in the game for money and
not really there to help people. And so
there's this always, like, question of, do I
really need to do what the dentist just
told me, or should I just go somewhere
else and get a separate treatment plan and
get another opinion from another dentist to see
if it's cheaper or if I really do
need to do this? And so I feel
like AI is going to help
calibrate a lot of dentists because, you know,
we have AI now that's incorporated in some
of our,
radiograph software where they're reviewing things. And I
feel like, you know, over time,
insurance companies are gonna start utilizing,
AI technology,
and helping to calibrate, you know, what they
will and what they won't accept,
for treatment so that there isn't this push
for upselling treatment to patients and take advantage
of patients and then maybe getting that trust
back from patients knowing that AI is there
to advocate for them and is standardizing it
across the board.
Yeah. Yeah. Abs absolutely. I think AI right
now is such a hot topic in health
care.
And, you know,
unfortunately, I do think that the miseducation of
dentistry is taking a toll on us. And,
you know, I I know I've heard from
several people that, you know, they don't think
that dentistry is that important to their overall
well-being, which is really unfortunate,
because I, you know, I get to talk
to people like you all the time and,
you know, you say the exact opposite, which
I completely
completely believe.
For you, what would the most effective health
care leaders need in order to be successful
in the next 2 to 3 years, would
you say?
I would say
effective communication.
I feel that we need to change the
way that we are communicating with patients.
People don't really take too well
to having somebody, if you're, you know, if
you're looking at a commercial for a dental
product or some information and somebody's sitting there
with a suit and tie and they're using
all these big fancy words and telling you
about peri implantitis and gingivitis and periodontal, like,
we need to bring
our
lingo down a bit and be more,
of on the patient side. And so we
need to change our approach with how we're
communicating
our clinical findings,
our oral hygiene instructions to patients,
and we need to just put ourselves in
their shoes and pretend as if like we're
trying to explain this to our younger sister
or our younger brother or our mom or
our dad, and not use so much technical
terms because then we're wasting our time, and
it just goes over the patient's heads.
And working on this effective communication and just,
you know, bringing things to a to a
a a easier
form for patients to understand, you'll have greater
outcomes with, cooperation from the patient, and you'll
start seeing great results with all of the
amazing work that you're doing. You're not gonna
be having to,
replace so many fillings due to poor oral
hygiene. You'll actually see some buy in from
the patients because they actually understand
why they're there, what you're doing, why you're
doing it, and what they need to do
when they go home.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I completely agree with you
there. And I wanna thank you so much
for those final thoughts, James. This has definitely
been an informative discussion. So, again, I wanna
thank you so much for coming on Becker's
HealthCare, and I look forward to connecting, with
you again soon.
Thank you. Thank you for having me.